1993 DWI death case resolves with plea

Defendant had adopted false ID.

Juan Carlos Guerrero lived under the alias Alejandro Mejia for years before the Bexar County district attorney’s office used DNA evidence to prove his true identity. He pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter Wednesday.

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For 17 years after he killed an Air Force retiree in a drunken-driving wreck, Juan Carlos Guerrero avoided responsibility by adopting a new name and identification.

On Wednesday, as he acknowledged his true identity and pleaded no contest to the 1993 involuntary manslaughter charge, one person who had helped bring him to justice sat in the courtroom, alternately in smiles and tears.

“Everybody has one case,” longtime victim advocate Bette Berns said, explaining that of the thousands of families she has volunteered with over the decades, this was the one that always stuck with her. “This was my one case that I needed to be solved before I could retire.”

Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the maximum punishment of 10 years in prison when state District Judge Ron Rangel sentences Guerrero, 40, next month. The adult children of Jim Blihgsne, who was 55 when he died, are expected to attend the sentencing hearing.

Authorities said Guerrero was driving with a blood alcohol level of .25 percent — 21/2 times the limit then of .1 — when he swerved into oncoming traffic and hit Blihgsne's Chevrolet Caprice head-on. He walked past officers at the hospital where both men were taken and disappeared, the San Antonio Express-News reported at the time.

Having fled to Mexico to be with family while recovering, he returned a year later with a new set of Mexican ID cards under the alias “Alejandro Mejia,” a witness later told police.

Berns kept on the case for years, holding news conferences on the fifth and tenth anniversaries of Blihgsne's death. After an age-enhanced photo was released at the second news conference, a tipster alerted authorities to the ruse. It would take another seven years to prove Mejia and Guerrero were one and the same.

Last year, after Berns convinced a professor from California to confirm in a report that a 17-year-old blood sample still could be tested for DNA, prosecutors used a grand jury subpoena to obtain a DNA sample from letters that Guerrero, as Mejia, had sent to probation officers handling a 2007 driving while intoxicated case. It matched.

The case now is a courthouse anomaly, with much of the file on the now-obsolete criminal charge written with a typewriter or dot matrix printer. “Involuntary” manslaughter was replaced by “intoxication” manslaughter, and a stiffer penalty range, in the mid-1990s.

Assistant District Attorney Charles Rich said Berns helped keep the case “in the forefront” as it passed from prosecutor to prosecutor over the years.

And after the case became a personal quest to bring closure for Blihgsne's family, with her role eventually changing “from victim advocate to person involved,” Berns acknowledged that she needed some closure as well.